skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At a street market in Quito, Ecuador a few years ago I watched in horror as a backpacker pulled out his shiny iPhone and shoved an app like this in the face of a vendor.

The phone cost more than the vendor will make in a year, and the backpacker was oblivious that he was shoving that in her face.

I would never use such a thing.
"Verizon" and "Verizon Wireless" are separate companies. It looks like this refers to Verizon Wireless: e.g., if you have Verizon service for phone, FIOS, or whatever, you are unaffected.

Well, they're probably still selling your personal data, but not in this specific instance.
I found the tone of that website a bit offensive. After I bought it, it said something like "if your family or friends would like to read these books, tell them to buy them".

Wtf?! After I just paid, you're telling me to not do what I'd to with a physical book? (lend it)
> True, it may no longer be easy to do that passively - it now requires active action, like refusing to watch TV.

For sure. I don't have a TV personally, but it's interesting to go to a developing country where they are desperately trying to get things like TVs, iPhones and shiny cars. By definition that's an increase in standard of living, so of course they want it.

> I wouldn't say they are happier than you : they seem to be, but they have their own problems.

That's the big one. Hollywood is an excellent marketing dept., but it's not even close to the truth. Funny how you never see a blockbuster movie about the millions living in America below the poverty line, or those that have lost their houses etc.

Once again, when you're on the other side of the world watching Jennifer Anniston, how can you know it's not reality?
No. It's also public if anyone you interact with wants it to be. I have no way to prevent someone else from taking a picture of me and uploading it to Facebook with my name attached.

This is the sort of behavior that used to be the realm of tabloid journalists and paparazzi and viewed as ethically uncool; now it's expected of everyone.
The site you link to says:

We’re just running a competition here…..so what you do with your source once the competition is over is on you. We encourage participants to open source the codebase of their applications for the benefit of the community. However, if you choose not to open source your application, well, that’s you decision.

Please note that the competition organizers will have access to your code base throughout the competition, in order to make sure that no cheating occurs (as outlined previously).

We won’t steal anything from you, promise! However, we do reserve the right to use your application’s likeness as a promotion for this or future contest.
Hipmob Demo - Live chat in your iPad app
Well done. I like how answers are given as tiles. Its a good experiment to try with nuuton. I do not like, however, that you did not serve too much from the classic search UI/UX.
Shoot me an email: my username [at] nuuton [dot] com
You can always pay for premier support (which we do). $500/year and < 24 hr turnaround times + better SLA.
or the iPhone/iPad and the Apple Store
The 2012 Digital 100: The Complete List
Not really; at the margins we are at, people are trading a fair coin toss of a nickle on each traded for a weighted (against them) toss of a penny.
Yeah, Patrick has mentioned that they're working on the UK before. Makes sense, it's the next-biggest English-speaking market after Canada.
Ayo from Hipmob here - a few times as we've posted updates in the past, folks have asked for a demo video. I resisted as I initially thought Hipmob would be self explanatory, but that was my mistake. Hope this explains the product a bit better - would love any feedback to ayo@hipmob.
Wisdio - A Story in 3 Acts (what 3 key things we've learned in our startup)
The Accidental Standing Desk
Thanks Brendan, stops an absorbent waste of time :P

Great presentation btw.
For me, it would be great if the entire button was replaceable with my own link, not just the text (ie. if I could style it with CSS to my heart's content)
People keep paying them money.
We looked into AMQP based solutions. Our understanding is that slaving, master-slave failover, or other strategies are used to mitigate the fact that there is a broker responsible for a given stream of messages.

We wanted a brokerless, decentralized, and distributed system. NSQ has no broker or SPOF so it is able to route around failures.

That said, I think RabbitMQ is a good tool depending on your requirements. I can imagine a broker proving useful in situations where you may want strict ordering or no-duplication. Those were tradeoffs we were willing to make for fault tolerance and availability.

Also, given the fact that we were already operating infrastructure built on simplequeue (which is also distributed and brokerless) we found it more appealing to evolve rather than replace.
I agree. There's something good going on over there. Seems like it's a good thing to be under pressure from Chrome.
That's a very interesting phenomenon. I wonder what the explanation is for it.
George Church on the Future of Stem Cells
You're way out of line flagging this, in my opinion. It's a security issue, and a big one at that. I also see no reason to believe that the user is attempting to "score points". Lastly, the comment is in fact quite useful.
> But to put a place where one cannot buy chewing gum at the top of some list of free societies is an interesting choice.

I'm sure you believe that, as many do. I'm not saying Singapore is a free country. But it IS comparable to the US and western Europe.

So, you can't buy chewing gum in Singapore, big deal. You can't buy alcohol on a sunday in many places in the US. You can't buy wine in a grocery store in New York.

I've heard from a Yemenite guy that you can't get their traditional perfectly-legitimate-everywhere-else stimulant (can't remember the name - Jhat?) in the US.

Before Feb 2008, you could not buy a sex toy in Texas. In Alabama, you still can't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_obscenity_statute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Obscenity_Enforcement_Act ; I don't remember which state right now, but in one of them, walking shirtless down the street is enough to get you on the sex offender list.

Again, I'm not saying Singapore is free or a bastion of democracy. But theory means nothing, and in practice, it is on par with the rest of the western world.
Forgive me from asking from ignorance, but isn't the first point begging the question of complicated, multi-dependency code?
Not at all, sorry for piling on :) I swear there were no other replies when I commented.
Actually, the design is The Atlassian Design Guidelines and it uses the Atlassian User Interface project (Atlassians Bootstrap) which all Atlassian products are using to maintain a consistent look and feel https://developer.atlassian.com/design/
He launched the Personal Genome Project, among other things:

http://www.personalgenomes.org/

Really an inspirational figure working on the kind of stuff that could change all of our lives for the better.
It is unfortunate that doing so takes you away from the site (I imagine the basic use case right now is to type in a bunch of queries to see what it displays.)

Ideally, it would show Google search results in an iframe, although I imagine that is against their TOS. Maybe just linking to Google search results would be a better experience.
Email support, they developed has been super responsive.
That they're more popular on Pandora than Amazon.
Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others
What are you talking about? The animations are extremely tasteful and restrained. Don't be a curmudgeon.
Ask HN: Review my first JavaScript library
Hi Everyone,

I have been working on a JavaScript library project that has grown out of discovery and learning what I've found useful in app development. I typically use some of these tools alongside jQuery or something that makes manipulating the DOM easier. I'm looking for some feedback, constructive criticism or just general suggestions. How can I improve the core class system around Object.create? How can I improve publish and subscribe? Any other module or implementation suggestions welcome.

Introduction: http://ordinaryrobot.com/#page-hawkjs_intro
Github: https://github.com/mparke/hawk.js

Thanks for any thoughts.
Right, because no vendors in developing countries are aware that western visitors-including backpackers-are comparatively well off.

I don't travel in Asia much, but if some European languages are added, this will go on my must have list of apps.
He is not suggesting that, please don't argue against strawmen.
There's a profile of George Church in the New York Times here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/science/08church.html
A middle class living (depending on how many ways it's split) as just one source of revenue isn't a bad deal. Not to mention there's a promotional aspect to streaming on Pandora as well.
Oracles x86 Reference Manual (AT&T syntax)
Heh, that's why I always fake address details when I'm checking out cable or DSL options. Of course they're going to use the personal information you enter for marketing purposes, that's why they ask for specifics like apartment number and your mobile number that they don't need to determine service availability.
Is Asia being considered at this point? I would expect the English market to be top priority but I'm sure there are at least a few Japanese and Chinese developers who would love to start using Stripe...
That's really nice.

I'm wracking my brains trying to think of a good use for it. There must be one.
Why is this an Oracle document?
As a stereotypically humble Canadian, I feel compelled to point out that UK is an even bigger and more English-speaking market than Canada.
I like to work hard for a few years, then take a year off. I'm doing that right now. I find it a lot more effective than trying to jam too many different activities into an ordinary week.
Pandora is a music discovery tool that is not based on popularity. That is, if you tell Pandora you like a certain type of music, Pandora is about as likely to play similar obscure music as it is to play similar popular music. Other similar services such as Spotify or Last.fm base their music suggestions on the person <-> song graph rather than on the attributes of the music, so they will primarily suggest very popular music (which I will flagrantly assume is well correlated with Amazon sales rankings).

Edit: Oh, I see. I assume these artists just have much better music than they have marketing. It would be interesting to know what sets them apart, though.
I'm not a sysadmin but I ended up looking after the office network and you are 100% right about this. Not only that, by the time you know someone has a problem, they're already annoyed, at you, for no good reason. More often than not, it's their own fault.

The other day someone was complaining that the internet was slow (it was), turned out they were syncing dropbox, backblaze and icloud, saturating the network. I understand now why sysadmins lock down everything where they can :)
Hey, what does the backend look like?
Discovery, I'd imagine. Amazon has a "you might like this" but most of the time clicking those links is not actively what you are doing on Amazon, whereas it is Pandora's whole model.
With a growing startup ecosystem (500 startups being officially here, for example) and very few payment solutions (for example, Paypal only offering Payments Standard), I thought I'd just drop in to inquire about Mexico on the short list for expansion.
I regularly need the source code for Maven or its plugins to check where exactly a bug is that I am experiencing.
I don't see why it should 'really upset' him, if he isn't suggesting that...
Try open sourcing it before it gets unshitty.

I'm trying it myself, just putting things out there and saying "to hell with it" because, ultimately, unshitifying things is Zeno's paradox kind of work; you're never really done. And, really, it's probably better than you think anyway.
Optimizely Surpasses Omniture Test&Target
As an electrical-engineer turned machine-learning-grad-student, linear transformations have been involved in most everything I do since my first year of undergrad. But all this time, I've done matrix multiplication the way I was taught in high school: "The (i,j) element of AB is what you get by walking right across the i'th row of A while you walk down the j'th column of B, taking the sum of products as you go."

It works, but there's no connection between that process and the intuition of a linear transformation; it's just a rote computation. And checking a long string of matrix multiplications to see if they intuitively make sense (shouldn't everything intuitively make sense?) is especially aggravating when you constantly have to interrupt your intuition to switch to a rote calculation.

I never thought to think of the columns of B as vectors that physically travel through A; to think of a dataflow or pipeline from right to left on the page. Sure, it's not a cure-all, but it'll be a useful mental tool to have.

Oh, and it's also an excellent introduction to the subject, although the Linear Operations section gets a bit muddled... first something's not a linear operation, and then it is, wat? Still, an excellent post.
Of course they are aware of it, but it's another thing to shove it in their face so blatantly.

Never mind the safety implications of publicly showing off a ~$500 device in a crowded street market in a developing country.
What is better than Jira for you and why?
Wow, the open/close animation is smoooooth! Almost as impressive as the functionality itself. Going to have to inspect the CSS for that goodness.
Right, I get what the differences in the models are between Pandora and other services. I'm referring to how the artists and/or the music itself differs that causes them to fit into this strange category.
Also, links to reviews on Goodreads:

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13539171-pirate-cinema (rating: 3.82)

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8503271-pump-six-and-othe... (rating: 4.11)

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11351953-zoo-city (rating: 3.68)

Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle by Mercedes Lackey – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10824696-invasion (rating: 3.73)

Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66659.Stranger_Things_Hap... (rating: 4.00)

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66657.Magic_for_Beginners (rating: 4.01)

bonus books:

Signal to Noise by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/957373.Signal_to_Noise (rating: 3.88)

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi – http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51964.Old_Man_s_War (rating: 4.18)
How to Stop Time
Be very wary of flagging. I believe (corrections welcome) it can result in an entire account being invisi-banned without notice to the user. Should be reserved for the most egregious offenses, with downvoting used for the rest.
This is probably going to end up being a controversial opinion, but I just don't think music is worth that much anymore (fiscally speaking). Sure, there was a time when being popular meant signing a contract-- it was the only way to distribute your music on a large scale. Radio and physical copies were the only way to hear music, period. But these days with the internet and the right software practically anyone can create and distribute high quality professional sounding music. It's just not that difficult anymore, and I don't think it justifies such a steep price tag. Could there be such thing as a "music bubble"?
An app without design is like a good story printed on a dot matrix printer
edit: 2 minutes too slow. Going to just leave this up as it has the ratings;)

And because I think goodreads review are way above amazon in quality (usually, not always) here are the links for GoodReads (ratings in brackets):

Pump Six and Other Stories http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2819368-pump-six-and-othe... (4.11)

Zoo City http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7163862-zoo-city (3.68)

Invasion: The Secret World Chronicle http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1986356.Invasion (3.73)

Stranger Things Happen http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66659.Stranger_Things_Hap... (4.00)

Magic for Beginners. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66657.Magic_for_Beginners (4.01)

Pirate Cinema http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13539171-pirate-cinema (3.82)

extras

Old Man's War http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51964.Old_Man_s_War (4.18)

Signal to Noise! http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/166570.Signal_to_Noise (3.88)
Ah you're totally right. The UK has almost twice the number of Internet users.
This is one reason I'd much rather be discovery-oriented than goal-oriented.

If you look at all of these as just part of achieving your goal, then all of these are negatives. The compiler prevents you from achieving things, your bug reports remind you how you haven't achieved them, every missed deadline makes you wonder if you'll ever achieve them, and your customers don't appreciate it when you do achieve them.

But if you look at all of this as a process of discovering what customers want and how to accomplish that, all of those negatives become positives. Your compiler error tells you early about something that would've become a problem later on. Your bug report reminds you of a case you haven't handled, some subtlety of the problem that you're just now learning about. Your missed deadlines mean that you didn't know enough about the project to estimate accurately before, so now you have more information about its true scope. And your unhappy customers will tell you ways in which you can improve.

Same facts, wildly different interpretations.
SenseFly - eBee
not entirely sure, I was looking for a good at&t ref and came across this thought it might be of use to other HNers who do this stuff too. It probably has to do with solaris which I guess belongs to oracle now (from sun).
The RIAA takes all of Pandora's profits[1]. I think if they were smart they would back off and give Pandora a little breathing room to invest in marketing and tech.

[1] http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AP&fstype=ii&e...
They've lost $92m since 2000.

I'm also wondering if those unknown artists arent possibly algorithm glitches or they just luckily match some sonic parameter so they keep coming up in the playlist. I'm so cynical :)

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/13/pandora-the-money-los...
Yes, feedback is helpful and you shouldn't take criticism personally. No disagreement. But feedback that's mostly focused on small problems is draining and criticism is draining. If that's not the case for you, awesome. It's the case for some people. Try to empathize with them. The article articulates that draining feeling and I find that pretty insightful and useful.
And another urban myth takes a step towards becoming reality...

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gold-membership-trolling
Corporate Bureaucracy is Anti-Capitalist
Pandora: Is there a reason the image on this blog post is so large? This one image, resized in the browser to 300x200, is consuming 2+ MB.

Namely, this one:

<img alt="tim-map.jpg" src="http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/tim-map.jpg" width="300" height="200" class="mt-image-right" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 20px 20px;" />

I've been noticing the resurgence of browser-based resizing of large images on a few different business blogs/formats, recently. In this case (and some others), the resize is to much less than 1/4 the original, so I'm thinking it's not a "Retina" thing.

Maybe it's just convenience for the company/blogger, not bothering to resize. But then, every access is a 2+ MB hit -- which is how I noticed it -- both for you, and for the viewer, which may particularly impact mobile viewers and others on limited bandwidth connections.
I'm asking everybody to submit answers, and there are plenty of people submitting "I don't know"s.
I also use hg-git almost exclusively. My main issue with it is that pushing and pulling takes considerably more time, from 20-30 seconds for plain linear commits up to many minutes if there are merges involved. It's not a showstopper for me (especially considering the alternative of working with git direcrly) but I can see it being more problematic for people that tend to push on every commit.

My workaround is to also keep a local git mirror (git clone --mirror) and push through it:

~/repo$ hg push ~/repo.git
~/repo$ cd ~/repo.git
~/repo.git$ git push upstream

That's typically much faster than `hg push upstream`.
They have more data about all the pieces and processes leading to their ultimate market share and profitability so I have no doubt they try to maximize those.

I suspect the biggest issues are that all their suppliers and customers are in that region. Think fabs to make the chips, the various motors and related electronics, coating processes, and then sending them off to the places that make HP/Dell/etc systems. If just the drive factory were moved then you'd still have the drive parts crossing the ocean to get to the US and the completed drives crossing once again to go back into the systems.

Usually the relocations happen when a disruptive solution comes along. You get the advantage of a somewhat clean sheet. For example SSDs don't need all the mechanical components and fine tuning, so they can be made with a completely different supply chain.

It won't happen in hard drives but for other products customization is what can spur relocation. For example Lenovo is opening a manufacturing plant in the US to deal with customization which allows quicker response times. (Customized orders often can charge a little more which offsets increased costs.)
There are some great books which may help provide you with some structure on how to manage the team:

Peopleware: Productive Projects & Teams http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-S...

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-P...

Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules http://www.amazon.com/dp/1556159005/?tag=stackoverfl08-20

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable http://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Fabl...

Fundamentally, cultivating a healthy team culture is the most important role you can play. Foster open, transparent communication, and avoid falling into the trap of micromanagement. Keep things happy, keep it real. All the best!
I wonder if it's the amount that gets paid to the label, and then the artist gets a fraction of that?
I wonder what % of each artist's total income these Pandora numbers represent. Is Pandora (or any other streaming service) a sustaining financial source for many of these artists when compared to music sales, touring, licencing, etc. or is it just a drop in the bucket?
I see your point on that - interesting overall take on how you can't judge from the outside.
Might be worth mentioning that the two Kelly Link collections are licensed Creative Commons and available here free: http://smallbeerpress.com/creative-commons/
Well worth checking out if you enjoy contemporary 'weird' fiction.
Hi, since there seems to be a lot of interest, I figured I could answer all of them at once in a blog post which I'll post sometime tomorrow.

To answer your question though, the backend is running on Python. There's no particular reason. I just find it a lot easier to script with. It's running on fCGI with nginx on the backend server. On the front is PHP... which is served through up by apache. I find it easier for me to do $_GET, hack around forms really fast and also just echo Javascript everywhere.